Not too long ago Facebook released it's latest stats saying it now has over 900 million members. While this is a very impressive milestone, there is one thing I hear from people that makes me want to simply bang my head against my desk is a statement similar to the following one:

Websites and SEO are dead! They are now being replaced by Facebook.

Say what? Last time I checked, my site here is still alive and thriving and the number one marketing tool for generating income. I've got a fantastic Facebook page with a wonderful Facebook app that was built by my friend Mike Mueller. I update these regularly and they do help my business. But, I do not focus my energy on driving traffic to this Facebook page. Instead I try using Facebook and any other social networks that I am on to drive those readers to my WordPress site.

Why? Well, it is pretty simple. Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networks that you use are not owned by you. Even if you purchased shares in Facebook, you still don't own the space you use there and run the risk of being shut down or deleted at any moment if you do something wrong, or get accidentally caught in a glitch of the system. It's like renting a home. You may want to paint the walls in the house green, but if the landlord says no, you can't do it.

Better yet, what if Facebook changes something you don't like. Where do you send your complaint? Does your complaint get addressed in a timely manner? I don't know about you, but I've never once got someone on the phone or by email from Facebook to actually speak to me directly. I was told once that in order to get a personal account representative at Facebook you need to be advertising on their platform and spending around $10,000 per month. I'm not sure about you, but I don't have quite that type of money available.

The fact of the matter is that they are going to do whatever they want and you don't have much say. I laugh whenever they make a change to design or features. Almost instantly a new page on Facebook is created complaining about the change that picks up a few million fans hoping that if they band together they can get things changed. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen, but at least misery has company.

Shift Your Home Base

Instead of focusing all your energy on building a large following on Facebook or another social network, you need to direct all that energy and time to building traffic on your website. It's the only thing out there that you in control of. If you have a custom WordPress siteand you want to add a feature to the design, you can. If you don't want a feature available anymore, you simply log in and delete it. It is your home base that you can claim ownership over and not have to worry about losing at any moment as long as you continue to pay for your domain registration and hosting plan.

This is where most of your time should be spent. Not on sites that could disappear at any moment.

Re-Focus Your Strategy

Here's where I see a lot of mistakes. We spend our time trying to drive our traffic to like us or follow us on a particular network. It might work well right now, but if you put all your efforts into driving your readers all to a Facebook page that is shut down all of a sudden, they are lost the minute the page dies. Instead, if your readers are in the habit of coming to your website and your page gets shut down, the loss is very minimal.

Maybe you are thinking that I am just being negative by all this talk of pages being shut down, so let's shift gears a moment. Unless you have a custom app on Facebook, how does someone view your products, make a purchase or even simply contact you about making a purchase? It's virtually impossible to do so. If a consumer wants to make a purchase, they would at some point need to be pushed to a website to do so.

Your website is where your products or services can be featured. It's where I can learn more about your business. It's also the one component of your online marketing that has lasting power. Blog posts I wrote four year ago still bring me business today. Facebook and Twitter status rarely live past 24 hours.

So, before you begin focusing more time and effort into building a large group on a social network, or platform that isn't your main website, realize that you are using a platform that is here today and could be gone tomorrow.

I have NEVER considered FB the centerpiece of my online marketing strategy and can't imagine why anyone would! One of the values I see in FB is that it ranks so well with Google, so creating a FB URL that clues internet prospects that you are an agent in the market they are searching is a good way of increasing the chances of having those prospects find their way to your IDX (which is the HUB!).

Secondly, networking with agents OUTSIDE YOUR MARKET on FB is a great way to increase referral business. It ALWAYS IRKS ME when I see agent FB pages where the "owner" is friended to every agent in their office! They've missed the point!

The HUB of my online strategy is my IDX. Active Rain, FB, LinkedIn etc are only tools to help prospects find it!

BTW, wondering what your opinion is of the BeKnown app on FB?

Posted by Kate McQueen, Tailored service for your real estate needs! (Realty ONE Group-Lone Star) about 6 years ago

My Facebook page hardly gets any traffic after each post, and each post is just sending the user to the content on my personal website and blog anyway.

Tatyana- Self hosted WordPress is much more expansive than the .com version. On the self hosted, you can customize and add just about any and everything you can think of. YOu create your own guidelines and are in the drivers seat. Using the .com is much like ActiveRain. There's a lot of flexibility, but you still must abide by rules set forth by someone other than you. You also cannot always do everything you would like.

At the same time, you are also responsible for all of your actions and if you break something, you have to fix it yourself if you don't at least have a web developer create your site for you.

I remember when AOL and 4anything.com were going to take over the world...FB has almost jumped the shark.

Posted by Stuart Dobson (eLoanRates.org) about 6 years ago

I barely have a presence on on Facebook and until recently didn't do much to update my site. I'm going to post more updates and information there but I have not plans to rely on it for significant lead generation. It's one tool of many but my website is still the key.

Jeremy, you can probably say the same thing about ActiveRain. It could be shut down tomorrow and there's nothing you could do about it. I think it's just smart to make sure that one creates content for their own site while also blogging on ActiveRain. It good to diversify.

Posted by Tim Maitski, Truth, Excellence and a Good Deal (Atlanta Communities Real Estate Brokerage) about 6 years ago

JB...

I like the way that you presented this. While may sites can be excellent tools, there is nothing like the total control that you have with your own property!

Jeremy, thanks for the reminder of what Facebook really is - we don't own anything about it. Kind of give me the creeps when I think how much people have posted on there that they have no control over.

I agree with you. We have no say on Face Book. We see this every time they make system changes. And we feebly follow behind trying to figure out the new change and how it is going to affect us. Our web site should be where we divert any traffic too.

Jeremy, this is some great information. I don't use facebook, although I know agents do. I had too many problems with it in the past that I don't care about it. I never could figure out how a home buyer buys a home on facebook.

I learned this the hard way. . I got a blogger site deleted. . with a click of a button .. . overnight. .that had over 100 posts. . .poofhh gone forever. .not anymore . . all my WP and sites are hosted on my account.. .

Jeremy - Ye, this makes so much sense and it makes me sad with some of the small businesses that still don't have their own website and instead say, "yes, but I have a facebook page." Not the same at all.

Posted by Women of Westchester Working Together, Women helping Women get ahead (Women of Westchester Working Together) about 6 years ago

Jeremy - There will always be talking heads saying nothing value, just hype! Social media has its place and you know that I love it. Maybe the true issue is that some folks don't get the need and value of an active website (a blog, with fresh content daily.) I love what you've done for my site! You're the bomb!!

I've never depended on anything but our websites to garner exposure and response which has been working quite successfully for several years now. In fact our website has helped us grow our business Nationwide in the past 5 years.

I certainly agree with you and like the graphic that you used at the end. Everything needs to point back to and drive traffic to a web site that you own and control. Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter should all be used to drive interest and traffic back to that site.

Having said that, it does no good to just go sign up for accounts on all of those sites and to have a blog, if one never posts anything. The search engines pig out on content and fresh content is best. So I advise new agents that I mentor to set aside the time to post to their blog at least once a week and more if they can. Use those posts to point back to their Web site and then post to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that they've just posted a blog entry and point back to the blog. It ain't rocket science to improve one's ranking in search engines, but it does involve commitment and work.

Posted by Norm Werner, Helping the first time and every time (Real Estate One) about 6 years ago

I may be a troglodyte, but I dropped FB last year as a waste of time and concentrate on my own websites.

Jeremy...As always great info and in a very timely setting, There is no doubt I get more actual real estate traffic from the other sites I work on...facebook is social and has only helped my business slightly.

Thank You, Jeremy. I was thinking that it just sounded too confusing to me. I think we have way too many things now that take away our time, I just didn't needed another thing to soak up the rest of it.

I'm not a Facebook lover - I rarely use it myself and was trying to "socialize" with my followers for 5-10 minutes a day, but it was forced and I'd rather work on my website - that's where I can get lost for hours with blogging (I have multiple blogs) and updating. Twitter? I have never read more than one Tweet from one fellow AR member - I don't have the time or interest for Twitter. I have an app that sends my blogs and posts to my social media with a press of a button, so I do that.

2007 was my best year where I sold over 12 million dollars worth of real estate by myself. I want to say about 80% of those clients came from my website! It has never happened again, and of course real estate tanked after that year, but I still get daily sign-ups from my site. I've never gotten anything from social media yet.

There are many ways to get clients. There are still agents my age and older (and younger) that have not embraced the Internet at all and are still doing very well. I don't cold call or knock on doors - if I had to do that to be successful I'd get out of the business. Others thrive on it.

You don't have to put all (or any of) your eggs into social media, as some gurus suggest, to be successful. And as you mention, Jeremy, you don't own any of these websites, which IMO is one of the biggest issues.

Very good advice. But let's be frank (and some comments already note this): Facebook is a terrible waste of time and efforts. If you want to put up a page and have it funnel into another account, such as a custom WordPress site, that's fine. But Facebook is hyper kludgy. It's poorly designed and very difficult to move around in. On top of that, as noted, Facebook has this disconcerting habit of changing the way it works, what the defaults are, what the privacy policy is. So if someone wants to go ahead and use Facebook as one of many funnels, more power to them. But anything more is just a waste.

One point I'm not sure came through on the post, though, is the difference between using the WordPress platform and having a custom WordPress site/blog. The former--using WordPress' own platform--is just as dangerous as using Facebook. In that case, you're simply using the WordPress code to serve as your own site. And, as noted, so long as you renew your domain and hosting fees, it's yours. But if you use the WordPress site, you haven't gained anything as far as control is concerned.

Posted by Donald Tepper, DC area investor helping heirs of inherited homes (Long and Foster) about 6 years ago

Hi Jeremy, we agree and recently read a great article that says good old fashion prospecting is still beating social media by a long shot.

Posted by Bob Miller, The Ocala Dream Team (Keller Williams Cornerstone Realty) about 6 years ago

I have to say that it really bugs me when a new business starts up (brick and mortar) and instead of putting a website together they have a facebook page! That's totally useless for me as a consumer and I would expect others to feel the same way. If they want to do both, great. If they are going to opt for just one, they need a website!

Jeremy - I could not agree more. I am rarely on FB. I do have a page and all my wordpress posts are automatically uploaded to FB. I get business from my website and that is where I spend my time. When someone is looking for a home in a specific area they generaly will "google it" not "facebook it".

Social media sites are simply tools that you should use to drive traffic to your website, so if you have a compelling message, getting folks to follow the rest of your message or story should be easy to convert, shouldn't it? Regardless, great post.

Excellent point about where our focus should be and which wordpress site to get. Thanks for this informative post.

Posted by Sharon Sanchez, Your Number "1" Source For Real Estate. (Ace Home Realty) about 6 years ago

We are told Facebook is where we need to be and I post there but is does take away from meaningful prospecting time.

Posted by mary purcell about 6 years ago

Hi Jeremy,

Great points... Everything in moderation... FaceBook and ALL the rest of the social media pages should be geared to driving potential & existing customers to your own website...

Thanks for the reminder !!

Lou

Posted by Lou Zandy (WeLoveMarcoIsland.com) about 6 years ago

Jeremy:

I am working on my WordPress site, but I think I should trade it in on a WordPress.org site and make it the place to go. I update Facebook at least 3 or 4 times a week, but it doesn't seem to bring me business.

I still think good old fashion cold calling and door knocking is the only "high success rate" way to build your business. The % of agents who can make a good living on social networking and a web site are very small. However, I can door knock and be successful....sure it's a lot of work and you've got the elements to deal with, but for the average agent, it can be done. I wish you the best of success.

Posted by Larry Hodel (First Team SnS Real Estate) about 6 years ago

Hi Jeremy, I enjoyed the analogy, but I think that it needs a bit of adjusting.

FB is like crashing on a friends couch, a moody friend who keeps rearranging the room and changing the rules, and who may kick you out for any reason and with out any notice.

Your website is REALLY A RENTAL, you do not own this space, the rent goes up, generally with small print notices from the landlord, and when you decide to go find a new rental it is hell to get your stuff back and transferred into the new isp.

Bob- I'd disagree. If you have a self hosted WordPress site, your only true costs are the original purchase if you don't build it yourself. Your monthly fees can change from time to time if the hosting company raises their monthly fees, but I liken that to the utilities on your home.

I know my electric bill rate has increased over the past few years. Unfortunately, that's just part of daily living. I could stop paying them, but then I'd sit in the darkness with no power, kinda like if I stopped paying a hosting company.

You wrote a nice long and thoughtful post. Sadly I only have two words to add: You're Right!

Posted by Gene Riemenschneider, Turning Houses into Homes (Home Point Real Estate) about 6 years ago

Jeremy, great post. I've been writing about the same thing for home stagers for some time.

To me generating tons of content for an outside blog or FB without taking care of your own WordPress site is like renovating a house you don't own. When the landlord sells it, they make the money not you.

Yes, you rent hosting as Bob said, but that's such a small piece of the puzzle. You OWN your domain, you're just renting the server you're hosting it on. You can switch hosting companies at any time without notice AND there is no reason there should be a problem getting your "stuff back". What stuff? If he means his actual web content, he should be backing that up no matter where he's hosting it.

Great post, I could not agree more. Facebook is a great tool for driving traffic to my Wordpress site. I am focusing my energy on blogging and creating great content and, as a result, my website is on the first page of Google for real estate in my area.